Music Meridian

You can hire Blake Fleming to drum on your project! He's played with the Mars Volta, Dazzling Killmen, and Zeni Geva. The weird thing is? He posted this on CraigsList. Someone at this level needs to post on that site to get gigs?

View his ad here

An email shot into my inbox today from Apple with the new releases at the iTunes store. I was pleased to see that they have the entire Chrysalis collection of Jethro Tull online.

Coincidently, I've been listening to a fair amount of the classic Tull albums recently.

So I was curious to see what the cost of two of my favorite Jethro Tull albums were, since they both consist of just one extended piece. (Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play).

Thick As A Brick is $9.99. Ok, that's fair I guess. It includes a live version and an interview. I believe this is the recent remastered CD version.

But there's no A Passion Play!! For some reason this album is not available on iTunes! Why?!?! A great prog-rock classic. Certainly better than Tull's lackluster "A" album.

Why would they leave this out?

Click here to see the iTunes "Complete" Jethro Tull collection.

Rush has a new album out on May 1st! Their first album of new material since Vapor Trails all the way back in 2002. I'm not counting that lackluster covers album they put out.

You can stream a new song called "Far Cry" over at Rush.com. They claim you can also hear it on the radio now. Are there really radio stations playing new Rush?? I thought they only played "Spirit Of Radio" and "Tom Sawyer" ad naseum....with the occasional "New World Man" or "Fly By Night" thrown in for good measure.

First impressions of the new song are so-so. It has a pretty typical latter-day Rush sound. It actually reminds me a lot of something you'd hear on their Counterparts album. Neil's just keeping the beat...not hearing too much amazing drums here. But a lot of times their singles aren't as good as some of the deeper cuts.

Looking forward to May 1st!

Yesterday I hit up Metal Haven on Belmont to pick up the completely awesome Twisted Into Form CD "Then Comes Affliction To Awaken The Dreamer". Twisted Into Form has ex-members of Spiral Architect and Extol involved, so you know it's some crazy tech/prog/metal. Well worth checking out.

Anyways, when I was there they had flyers regarding a "moving sale" for the month of March. Here's the specs:

3/1-3/18
$2 off all CDs/DVDs/LPs/T-Shirts

3/20-3/25
All CDs on sale $10.99
All DVDs/LPs/T-Shirts 25% off
All used CDs $5.00

3/26-3/29
"Sick Deals! You have to come see them! All reasonable offers considered!"

When I asked the guy at the counter where they were moving to he told me they didn't know where they were going yet. But they are definately closed at this location on March 30th. I guess they're being thrown out of their current location?

This sounds suspeciously like a going out of business sale to me. I hope not, this place is absolutely essential for Chicago area metalheads. I'll be keeping an eye on it. Hopefully this isn't another great Chicago record store biting the dust.